


Glitch

by bunsterjonez



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Compound, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Stark Industries, Technobabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-28 04:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18748939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunsterjonez/pseuds/bunsterjonez
Summary: Written for a Writing Challenge on Tumblr. I personally loved writing it, hope you like reading it! --BJ





	Glitch

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Writing Challenge on Tumblr. I personally loved writing it, hope you like reading it! --BJ

Mornings at the Network Lab in the newly restored Avengers Compound were efficiently productive.

As a direct result of your leadership role in the Lab, the Compound now enjoyed uninterrupted wireless networking, 24/7 troubleshooting and self-repair stations in every floor for Avengers to take care of basic gear upkeep. Techs were dispatched only when necessary, and complaints rarely reached your ears. Things ran on time, meetings were more often than not relegated to mere interoffice memos, and deadlines were met without delay.

So it was an unwelcome interruption when Tony’s holo call materialized unannounced in front of your desk on a Wednesday.

“Oh, so you  _are_ still working here, good.”

“If I wasn’t, you’d have no way of knowing that,” you said not bothering to look up at him as you finished up a diagnostics report. “What do you want, Tony?”

“Wong called, traveling between dimensions is eating up his Stark minutes.”

“I dispatched Randy to Bleeker Street already.” With a flourish, you signed your name on the report and sent it to R&D with a swipe of your hand. “And interdimensional WiFi isn’t a thing yet.”

“Feels like it should be,” Tony’s virtual self folded his arms, appearing to lean against the frame of the glass wall, his faraway look finally catching your attention, and regarding him for a moment.

“Are you actually leaning against a door frame right now? Where  _are_ you?”

“Hmm? Oh, never mind.” He stepped closer to your desk. “What are you doing about the glitch?”

You blinked, the words not registering. “I’m sorry, the what?”

“Glitch, the glitch!” Tony kept saying the word, as if that alone was enough to jog your memory.

“What glitch?”

“The one that shorts out my Stark launcher every morning. The glitch I keep sending memos about to Sparky over there–”

He gestured over to the office on his left… where an empty desk stood, littered with a fair few paper airplanes that had crash landed all around it.

You turned back towards Tony, your expression nonplussed. “He sparked one too many times. I fired him a week ago.”

“Which I would know about, if not for ‘The Glitch’.”

The tips of your fingers pressed against your temples. “Please stop saying ‘glitch’.”

“Just take a look at it,” Tony pleaded. “I haven’t been able to replicate it, I thought it could be rats, or faulty wiring… Which I highly doubt, since I re-wired this whole place myself–”

“Correction,” you cut him off. “You began wiring, got bored, and I had to finish the job.”

“Semantics,” he said dismissively, with a hand wave of his own. “I paid for it. And I don’t want to keep paying for it, so  _please_ –”

“All right, all right,” you said begrudgingly as you got up from your desk. “You know, it says a lot that even the great Tony Stark can’t figure out a bug in his own system.”

“Well, I got..” he trailed off, as he began walking away from you and the all too-knowing smirk on your face. “There’s hero stuff to do. Saving the world? Takes precedence. I believe in you!” And with a flicker he was gone.

You rolled your eyes, grabbed your tool bag and tablet, and headed down to the server room in a huff. So much for efficiency.

***

After checking the connectors and making sure no damage had been done to the hardware, you’d left a diagnostic workstation in the server room overnight. Having received no remote alerts of any kind by the time you got back to your office the next morning, you figured it had been a one-time error that had righted itself. But Tony’s frantic call at 9:20am made you blanch. 

Sure enough, when you went to retrieve the workstation, it had rebooted itself at precisely 9:16am, with no recording of anything that had happened beforehand.

You checked with the cleaning crew; maybe they had unplugged something they shouldn’t have. But their schedule didn’t match the occurrence, they were gone long before then.

You’d resorted to actually holding a meeting with other staff members, thinking more brains were better than one, but your little powow wasn’t yielding any results.

“We could set up wireless cameras..?”

“It won’t work” your words slightly muffled, your head in your hands. “They’ll short out because they’re still connected to the same network grid.”

“Well, unless one of us waits down in the server room for something to happen…”

You raised an eyebrow at the intern who spoke up, and he immediately regretted saying anything at all.

***

_“You did it!”_  Tony’s next message was gleeful. No files lost, no disruptions to the service.  _“You’ll have to tell me what it was sometime, I bet it’s a stumper.”_

According to the intern, nothing out of the ordinary had happened in the server corridor all morning, and you were left wracking your brain in the aftermath of your inadvertent success. That is, until Tony’s less-than-pleased message on your voicemail the week after.

“I don’t know what it could be!” you exclaimed exasperated. “I’ve told everyone to back up their work every morning before the cuttoff but–”

“Look, take a beat. Get a latte. Walk it off,” Tony said wearily. “It’ll come to you… just, make sure it’s soon, ok?”

It was with a disquieting mood that you made your rounds. There were a few self-repair stations that needed to be re-stocked, and you might as well take Tony’s advise and occupy your mind with work, rather than dwelling non-stop on a problem you couldn’t solve.

Exiting the elevator on the residential floor, you paused at the sight of a broad back, covered in a dark tank, dark trousers hung low on toned hips. You hadn’t had direct dealings with every Avenger in the tower, save Tony and Natasha, and you had to admit, seeing the Winter Soldier in the flesh, so to speak, was both intimidating, and… impressive, to say the least.

The only thing that actually managed to draw your attention away from his sculpted backside were the sparks flying from his prosthetic arm, and the steady stream of angry cursing coming from his mouth.

“Piece of– damn it!”

“Here!” you rushed towards the station, your tech bag swinging on your shoulder. “Let me help you with that–”

You reached him just as he turned to face you, and your words stopped in their tracks. And you thought his backside looked good. His eyes considered you quizzically as you stood in front of him, frozen by icy blue. 

“Whoa. I mean, hi. I mean–” you cleared your extremely dry throat, as his face relaxed, a hint of a smile at your flustered babbling. “Um, I’m with IT. what seems to be the problem?”

“Bucky,” he replied with a quick nod as way of introduction, though it really wasn’t necessary. Holding out his left arm, he continued. “It’s been malfunctioning these last couple of weeks, and I couldn’t find the grounding tape, so…”

“Sorry about that,” you said apologetically, pulling a couple of brand new rolls out of your bag, and sighing to yourself when you saw his eyes light up. “We didn’t mean to neglect the stations, there’s just… well, I guess it’s my fault.” You shrugged miserably.

He frowned at that. “Anything I can do?”

“Oh, no,” you tried to smile. “Don’t worry about it. Just a puzzle, I’ll figure it out.”

He returned the half-hearted gesture, and you wondered how long was it acceptable to keep looking at his chiseled jaw without seeming rude. But just then, the sparks from his metal bicep made him curse, and you wince. “Do you know when it started acting up?”

“I dunno,” he shook his head. “I got back from a mission last Tuesday night, and the next morning it just started sparking. Tony said he’d fix it, but I haven’t seen him–”

“Wait a minute,” you cut him of brusquely, and he blinked perplexed at your sudden change of demeanor. “Are you talking about last Wednesday?”

“Um… yeah? I guess…”

Clapping your palm against your forehead, you groaned, and Bucky’s eyes went wide.

Of course. You were SO stupid.

“Follow me,” you said, grabbing hold of Bucky’s arm and proceeded to drag him all the way down towards the server room, not realizing he hadn’t protested in the slightest.

***

“So, I’m the glitch?” Bucky said incredulously, as you kept dragging him back and forth past the server room, an assistant tech logging the occurence as the main power hub kept blinking on and off.

“Well, not  _you_ , exactly,” you said, but you couldn’t resist the manic grin on your face, flushed with relief at finally realizing what had happened. “The vibranium in your arm caused a surge because of spare hydrogen particles being absorbed and heating up underneath the plating. I assume this isn’t the route you usually take back from the training complex?”

He glanced slightly downcast, as though ashamed of himself. “It’s quieter.”

You hastened to change the subject. “They heated up by the wiring, causing a magnetized field around you, and shorting out the main network hub, inconveniently located behind the door. Thus, glitch.”

He stayed quiet, looking down at his arm, a strange sort of look on his face. Was that disgust?

“Hey,” you said quietly, placing your hand on it. He raised his gaze to meet yours, and felt yourself losing your breath yet again. “It’s not your fault.”

Both of you were staring too intently at each other to notice the tech roll her eyes and walk away, the findings of your experiment on hand.

“Thanks,” he finally said, his lips now in a half-hearted smile. “I guess guilt’s a default setting for me these days.”

“Haha, tech joke,” you said lamely, and his smile grew more genuine. “Well, if you’re into guilt-tripping yourself, It took me over a week to finally figure this out. That’s far too long to have Tony Stark on my ass about something.”

Bucky laughed at that. It was music to your ears, and you felt your heart just about burst at the sound. “ **I should feel guilty…”**  he said, his bright eyes now on yours. “ **But I don’t.**  Not now, anyway.”

You couldn’t resist the smile now growing on your own face. “Good.”

***

“The grounding sleeve from Manufacturing should suffice for now, but he’ll still need you to troubleshoot and fix the wiring,” you rattled off your findings to Tony’s projection, while you backed up all your files at the end of the day. “When are you planning on gracing us with your presence?”

“That’s kind of personal,” he replied in his usual offhand Tony way. “Can’t believe it was Barnes all this time, tell me how you found that out again?”

You stared stonily back at his signature smirk, and shut down your monitor. “Another time. I’m off the clock.”

“What, got a hot date?”

But your attention was drawn now to the blue-eyed Super Soldier standing just outside your office. You couldn’t help but return the smile Bucky gave you, as he waved on the other side of the glass.

“Now,  _that’s_  kind of personal, Tony.”


End file.
